Monday, October 22, 2012

Obama in debate: "This nation. Me."

Obama's response: you invested in companies that shipped jobs overseas.

Obama: US exports to China have doubled since I took office. We are sending a clear signal that America is a Pacific power.

Romney: I am a son of Detroit. I would do nothing to hurt the US auto industry. I said these companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy. I have never said I would liquidate the industry. Romney brought up government investing in Tesla, Fiskar, and Solyndra. Private industry is not going to invest in a solar company.

Obama: Governor Romney you keep trying to airbrush history.
A decade in which we saw drift...we are now seeing progress.

Romney: I don't want to go back to the policies of the last four years. 10 trillion in debt to 16 trillion in debt under Obama. It's a tragedy that the last four years have been so hard.

Romney in conclusion: I want to make sure we get this economy going. President's path: continuing declining in take home pay. President's path: twenty million without jobs.

After the debate, CBS talked about the debate style and focused on the "number of ships" argument. Although Romney quoted the Navy as not having enough ships, Obama hammered Romney with the "not enough bayonets" laugh line. Romney had a general theme: attacks on me are not an affirmative policy.

But here’s why it was also a vote loser. For a start, Twitter immediately lit up with examples of how the US Army does still use horses and bayonets (horses were used during the invasion of Afghanistan). More importantly, this was one example of many in which the President insulted, patronised and mocked his opponent rather than put across a constructive argument. His performance was rude and unpresidential. Obama seemed to have a touch of the Bidens, wriggling about in his chair, waving his hands dismissively and always – always – smirking in Romney’s direction. By contrast, Romney sucked up the abuse and retained a rigid poker face all night. He looked like a Commander in Chief; Obama looked like a lawyer. Who would you rather vote for?

Aside from the horses and bayonets moment, this was essentially a debate without incident. Part of the fault was the format. It’s interesting to note that Romney won the first debate while standing up and Obama did better in the second when walking around. But when both men were forced to sit for 90 minutes, the energy was inevitably reduced and neither broke through the fourth wall convincingly. Romney had a slight edge because he didn’t use his hands so much: Obama blew his closing statements by developing ultra-energetic conjurer’s hands (“Look at the hands, not at the cards, look at the hands…”)

0 Comments:

About Me

I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted
in the Capri case in N.D. Ill. An article that I wrote on DNA profiling was cited by the Colorado Supreme Court (Shreck case) and a Florida appellate court (Brim case). I was interviewed by NHK-TV about the Jan-Hendrik Schon affair. I am developing ipABC, an entity that combines rigorous IP analytics with study of business models, to optimize utilization of intellectual property. I can be reached at C8AsF5 at yahoo.com.